


Our Circumstances of Being (II)

by kenzieann27



Series: Short Story Stuff [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Novel, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV First Person, plz comment i am begging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29875581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzieann27/pseuds/kenzieann27
Summary: In the midst of tragedy, a young blind man is forced to reevaluate his life and the steps it took for him to get where he is while questioning the path that he is on.
Series: Short Story Stuff [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547146





	Our Circumstances of Being (II)

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of my very much in-progress novel! I am posting this here because I really need feedback on the story so far, the characters, and just about everything! Even suggestions for future characters or plot points to address!
> 
> I've been working on this story and these characters for just about three years now, and it's been such a crazy journey that I've loved more than anything. It's an honor to be able to write it, so I hope others like it and are able to share and/or comment so that I can continue it just as confidently as I was when these characters first entered my mind.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Even though I am the absolute worst at summarizing things (I know I'm not supposed to say that, but hopefully if you are reading this then you don't care too much).

Jude Bodenstein, my big brother, once told me that one of the great joys of life is being able to question the person that you are, to push past the boundaries of who you used to be in the hopes of becoming who you are meant to become.

Well, not exactly.

Of course, Jude _was_ my big brother, but the person I credit that quote to was not entirely a wise person (though we both liked to imagine he was). Nor did Jude tell me those things only once, but, hey, I’m more of a visual learner. Despite resorting to the spoken word to teach me his little lessons, I respected and looked up to my brother with such intensity that it seemed to have made up for the amount of attention he received from the tougher crowds he encountered. I stuck to my ways of learning simply because I had to, but Jude, on the other hand, was something else entirely; he led by example, he lived those words that he told me countless times. He was always trying to reinvent himself, to experience and explore everything life had to offer him. The one thing he never did change, though, was that cloud of hair that covered his head, those curls that compensated for the lack of thickness of his skull.

Not to say Jude’s open-mindedness was something to fault him for, but even I struggled sometimes to understand the things that he said just as much as the things he did. My brother was the only other person I’ve met in this world that defined beauty for the way that something was, not the way it appeared to be; though when he gave me that lesson, he used a bit more colorful language than I am used to using. But that was a lesson he learned with grace and excitement, while it was something I had been blessed with by birth.

Jude was open-minded in ways I would never understand. He could see the world, he had the ability to witness its ugliness, but he never did view it with anything other than complete awe. My brother only saw its beauty, only spoke of it. He’d talk endlessly about sunrises, sunsets, paintings he was studying, books he was reading, planets he was researching. It wasn’t just our world he cared about, he cared about every world, everything life had to offer. And he would explain those things to me despite knowing I would never be able to understand him fully. I would never be able to understand _anything_ fully.

And I was okay with that. Or, at the very least, I had told myself that.

It was those mental shruggings that led me there, to that day, where I sat in that uncomfortable chair surrounded by uncomfortable people and those uncomfortable lights. But it was my element, talking to people was my element, which angered me as it should not have been me that ended up in the chair. No, it was Tommy, Tommy should’ve been here, but he couldn’t. He disliked talking to people in most ways, which would have been ironic in any other situation.

Thomas Jeremy Roosevelt, the twenty-five-year-old representative from Michigan, had been stabbed. The brutal attack would have been fatal, every news station had claimed, if the young congressman’s husband Vincent was not there to stop the bleeding and call out for help. Most of the claims were untrue, of course, for multiple reasons, but mainly because I was not Tommy’s husband. I had denied that role to him twice before, and I would deny it to him again if the question left his lips in the future. And the event only furthered my reasons for not giving him that word he wanted to hear, that exclaimed “Yes!” that haunted his mind undoubtedly. I was not ready to be that person to him yet, and he at least respected that through every day, through every night, good and bad and everything in between.

Because of the incident, I was rushed over to New York to be interviewed, a request that I struggled with before accepting. I wasn’t entirely in favor of leaving behind the person I loved to be asked some predictable questions by some anchorman who wanted to profit off our misery, but it was Tommy that insisted I go. As much as he enjoyed being hailed a martyr, he understood that it was a moment that would help him in the future. It was by some miracle that Tommy was elected at all, the inexperienced socialist from one of the reddest districts in the state, and he didn’t want to lose his position by appearing to be some broken child lying in a hospital bed, just as defenseless as he was on the night of the attack.

No, Tommy wanted to be seen as the fighter that he was.

As I was not a fighter, I was taking a breath and adjusting my glasses as footsteps and shuffling papers surrounded me. I was there, and I was doing that interview to make Tommy look better, to make him look strong, but I couldn’t help but think that maybe sending his overwhelmed and hotheaded boyfriend to speak on his behalf wasn’t the best idea. Whatever pain medication he was on, I hoped his doctors had lessened the dosage to an amount where he wasn’t coming up with impulsive decisions that would definitely not come back to haunt his career later on.

“Could you remove your glasses? Just for a second, I need to apply your makeup,” a soft voice had stated to my left, causing me to look up and nod quickly, reaching up and pulling those thin frames off my face and holding them out for the woman to take from me, not understanding her question for an awkward moment before a wet sponge was being dragged across my cheek.

“You could’ve at least asked me to dinner first,” I groaned, allowing the makeup artist to continue making me appear more presentable for the cameras that undoubtedly were pointing my way. My brother always said I had a face fit for radio, and that day appeared to be no different, judging by the amount of the cold liquid that was being applied to my skin. “What are you doing?”

“I did ask, you know. And it’s just some primer and foundation,” she stated flatly. “Your skin is a little uneven.”

“Oh, really? I know how to do that stuff.” I squirmed as the woman attacked my face once more, that time with a brush that seemed to do little other than relentlessly tickle my nose. “My brother taught me how to do foundation since it’s essentially just smearing your face with skin paint. I wanted him to let me learn other stuff, but I think he didn’t want me poking around his eyes with eyeliner. I can’t imagine why not. But as much as I tried to learn how to do even just foundation, I never liked the feel of it.”

“Foundation is basic makeup, it’s mostly to just, y’know, make your skin look more even and smooth,” she explained with a light chuckle. “Makeup, in general, is a bit more complicated than that.”

“It’s a work of art on a living canvas,” I commented, trying my best to imitate my older brother and his endless list of artsy explanations. “Doesn’t that apply to everything, though?”

The woman hummed in response, pressing my glasses back into the palm of my hand. “I think Jasper is going to like you.”

* * *

Being with Tommy meant traveling a lot more than I had previously been used to, something that had quickly taken over my life as we drove from city to city for those crucial stops during his grand campaign tour. He had wanted his actions to speak louder than the words he was too afraid to say, having been just as socially anxious as the day I first met him. People had made Tommy nervous, as he never understood what to say to make them feel at ease in his near-constant fight-or-flight state, but he had accepted it if it meant that he would be able to change the world that had been so cruel to him. To us both, really.

New York, however, was something else entirely. I could sense that, from the minute the flight had landed, I was in a place of dreams. Where people went with hope, where they strived for greater things. It was a place where Tommy belonged, really, not me. I was happier wherever he was, and he wasn’t in New York.

During the ride over to the hotel, everything felt new, and it would have been exciting if I was there for any other reason. The voices, the air, the atmosphere, everything. Everything was something else, something that was reminding me of things I had not known for years. It was almost like that first day in the year where frost started to appear, where you’d reach out and touch the window and realize it felt more like ice than glass, where you’d go outside and breathe and everything felt still. There was a different kind of world that appeared when it became winter, when things became calm, and going to that city gave me that feeling once more, that feeling of suddenly being in a completely different world. New York was almost nostalgic in that way, making me feel like I was a stupid teenager once again, blasting awful music through my headphones as I tried to deny the world its way into my life for just a few minutes. But, even with those reminders, all of it was unique, it was new. It was not my teenage years at all.

Even the hotel had felt different, as it was going to be all along, as the knowledge that I was surrounded by eight million people was slowly seeping into my mind.

“Everything okay, Vincent?” Valentina had asked as she entered the room behind me. It was Tommy’s idea, of course, for her to accompany me on the trip. Val was nice enough, always spending late nights with Tommy answering emails and stamping letters. She was little more than an intern, a young arts major (though she was taking some time away from school to focus on her personal life) that wanted to have some form of a job that would give her writing practice as well as the time to care for her infant daughter, who was taking her afternoon nap in her uncle’s apartment in Detroit while Val was babysitting me.

Single parents, I had known quite well, were the ones who truly ran the world.

“Do you really think he’ll be going home on Wednesday? Or is that just something he told me to get me out here?” I shook my head as I tap, tap, tapped my way over to my bed, letting go of my suitcase and taking a seat on the edge of the soft mattress. “As cool as it is that I’m here, I’m not sure if it was the right decision.”

“I think it was smart,” she said as she closed the door. “I know it’s weird to say, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve been a rather, well, _unique_ person to have along.”

“I’m very aware of that, Val,” I replied flatly as I fell backward on the unsurprisingly comfortable bed. And I was aware of the whole situation of it all. I had never attempted to confide that in Tommy, but I had believed a good reason why he won his seat in Congress was because of his compassion towards me. The voters saw us, saw _me_ , and believed our relationship to be nothing more than something it wasn’t. I loved that idiot more than I probably should, but it wasn’t lost on me that my feelings were sometimes discarded for something deeper. It was never just Vincent, it was Tommy and Vincent. If we were to get married, everyone would assume I would be taking his name, that I would do nothing less than jump at the chance to accept the beautiful and distinguished Roosevelt name in order to leave behind my name, which was far from that. But, as my brother had once said, who would I be if I were not the Bodenstein that I am? Who would I be in the eyes of the man that I love if I were to jump ship and become the person everyone believed me to be? All I would be is some loyal servant, some asset to further his political career. Of course, everyone sympathizes with the sightless bassist, but more so with the sightless bassist’s boyfriend. And sympathy works wonders in the voting booth.

“I meant because of your history, dummy,” Val teased, snapping me out of those thoughts of mine I could never ignore as they spiraled around in my mind. “Thomas has been through shit, but so have you. You’re just as interesting as he is, you know. Even without all of that stuff.”

“No need to flatter me, Val,” I sighed, stretching my arms out across the bed. “But I shall take your compliment, even if it’s not completely true. I’ll be sure to include your review on the cover of my next album: ’just as interesting as Thomas.’”

“Yeah, well, you’re _both_ interesting. Never as interesting as your brother, but I don’t suppose anyone will ever be that interesting,” Val teased, laughing as she sat down on my bed next to me. A few years older than him, Val was a junior when Jude first entered high school, knowing him for his wit just as equally as for his hair. “God, he was always doing something, wasn’t he? Everything was interesting to him. French literature and skeletal anatomy fascinated him just the same.”

My brother was that person and more. It made his life a living hell, as he described it, being so interested in everything. Planning for college was a nightmare, having to choose just one thing to study threw him into a panic. For the longest time, all he wanted to study was himself, and I mean that in the best way possible. Exploring the possibilities of the self was who he was, it was everything he cared about. But it was who Jude was, not the person that he wanted to be. My brother confused me on most days with his strange speeches, but it was on one cold spring night where I felt like I truly understood the things that occurred in his mind, the things that I promised I would take on myself to join him in that crusade of his, that journey of becoming the people we were destined to be.

“He certainly was a character in school,” I replied with a soft smile. “I mean, he was basically a hippie. Let’s call a spade a spade here.”

“Well, hippie or not, he’d probably be stoked that you’re in _New York_ , Vincent. The Big Apple!”

“Here’s to the Big Apple, then, even though most apples are disgusting and taste like wet sand.” Lifting my hand in an imaginary toast, my smile grew further when Val took my hand in hers, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

* * *

Jasper Little, known by most as James (his middle name) and by his acquaintances as Jasper, was someone that anyone with a brain in this country had heard of. All of that was according to my father, the ever-changing Morgan Bodenstein, who couldn’t accompany me on this trip because, well, he didn’t want to. To most, Jasper was the head news anchor (or, to Morgan, _thee_ head kiss-ass) at some fancy news station in New York, one that was significant enough to be broadcast all over the country; to me, though, he was simply another voice radiating from the television most nights of my life. As much as my parents enjoyed watching and reading and listening to local news, there was always something powerful about knowing what was happening somewhere else.

My father had practically berated me over the phone while I was getting dressed to head over to the interview. He had worked as the head librarian at the local community college for the last twelve years, a job he stated he never would have taken due to him having attended that same college thirteen years before that. As a librarian, and as a father, Morgan had been obsessed with what he referred to as “the facts.” My father didn’t care about what you thought had happened to that book you checked out three months ago, he didn’t care about what you wanted to tell your mother after you failed a psychology quiz (the brain will forever be a mystery to me), and he most certainly did not care about what some upper-class, gray-haired anchorman had to say about people in rural Texas losing their homes in yet another hurricane when their real, actual loyalties lie with their job and their network and whatever billionaire is funding it. Morgan wanted to know what actually happened to the book, what you did tell your mother about the quiz (it was just a quiz, really… did it warrant yet another lecture on studying?), and what will happen to those people in Texas. Opinions bored my father, but that isn’t to say he wasn’t a caring person; when it came down to the more important issues, however, he wished people would just trim the fat and talk about what mattered. And, to him, what mattered is what happened, “the facts,” as he would say.

“That asshole doesn’t care about half the shit he’s going to ask you, Vincent. Don’t let him ask you whatever he wants,” my father had barked at me over the speaker while I was lacing up my shoes, a skill that I never quite mastered in my twenty-three years of life. Either one shoe was tighter than the other or the bow I had tied would be too small, leaving me to step on the laces while walking and undoing all of my hard work.

“I don’t think he’s going to ask much about me, Dad. I’m here for Tommy, mostly, so he’s probably just going to ask about him and how he’s doing and all that fun stuff.”

I somewhat regretted calling my father, knowing full well of the direction that our conversation would turn, that it was going to be much more than a quick call regarding interviews like the one I was about to endure. Despite that, I still needed his advice on the interview, as dealing with the more professional crowd was his forte, not mine. Though my father wasn’t one to pick up a phone and call anybody without my mother’s insistence, I jokingly offered in response my advice, though the odds of him ever associating himself with another punk musician who cared for little more in life than their music were probably not that great. I was his son, so he was associated with me by default, but in any other context, I was not sure he would care too much about the communities of people to which I had belonged. 

“They are going to ask about you, so just be prepared for that, you know? Don’t get all flustered and make yourself look like an idiot.” Though his heart was in the right place, I did always grow frustrated at my father’s choice of words, how they seemed to have all come out full of meaning to form something much less. “You may be there to talk about Thomas, but you are the one doing the interview, son. They know who they are talking to, they know you’re not someone else. They might not act like it sometimes, but they know you are a separate person.”

As someone that almost died while also working for the federal government, Tommy ranked higher than me in terms of importance to most people. As some idiot that was dating my father’s son, though, Tommy was never more important than I was. On most days, I appreciated that sentiment from my father, but not when I was getting ready to talk about one of the most frightening days of my life. Not when Tommy was getting his bandages changed and being harassed by his grandmother about the answers to her crossword puzzle. And certainly not when I knew my father was never quite accepting of our relationship to begin with; by saying that we would always be separate people, it made me feel as though he never would accept it at all. He might accept me, but Tommy represented something my parents- not just my father- didn’t understand and hadn’t thought of as a possibility when they had children. Jude and I weren’t exactly the children our parents envisioned themselves having, but, at least, they never stopped us from being the people we were. Not too much, anyway.

“Jasper is just going to ask about Tommy, you know that. He’d be wasting his time talking to me about anything else, especially since no one outside of Michigan knows who I am.” Sure, I’ve been on the local news before, mostly during Tommy’s campaign, though it was easier then. It felt like I knew the people who were asking me questions, telling me stories about their own lives. In some states, I believe, life is universal. Back home, we all knew those terrible radio commercials advertising the city transit system, those roads that were always bumpy no matter how much work was done on them, those beliefs that we were always on the outside because our state wasn’t exactly the first one that came to mind when you thought of the United States. But here, in New York, I’d be surprised if any of the people at the interview could point out Port City on a map. Not only was I representing Tommy here, but I felt a strange sense of responsibility to represent our district as well, our town.

“If he wanted to just talk about Thomas, he’d be talking to Thomas.” My father laughed, that incredulous laugh that I had been more than used to. It wasn’t so much insulting as it was endearing; it was just something Morgan would do when he thought of something he hadn’t said yet. “Why would they invite _you_ if they only wanted to talk to _him_?”

“I suggested that to Tommy, like, just doing a phone or video interview. He hated that idea, obviously, as I would not be here if he liked it,” I sighed. “Don’t tell him I told you this, but he can be a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes.”

“Vincent, I know enough about innuendos to know not to repeat that to Thomas.”

I shrugged, knowing only Val would know of the action, as I was satisfied with my words, believing that on that day, and every day I had taken a chance and talked to my father about my personal life, only “the facts” were spoken.

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Val had asked as we were in that always awkward elevator ride down to the ground floor (luckily, though, we were only on the fourth floor). “Even I know you well enough to know that, even if Jasper isn’t going to ask you questions about you, you will end up talking about yourself.”

“I think that they will be polite enough not to ask too much about me,” I nodded, hoping that she would accept my answer and move on from the conversation. “You don’t exactly talk about whatever your boyfriend is doing and what his history is all about on the campaign trail, y’know?. People voted for Tommy, they didn’t vote for our relationship. If he were running for president, then it would be a different story, but he didn’t.”

“Would you be okay if Jasper asked about it, though? Your history.”

I took in a breath as I thought, still unsure about that possibility. My story wasn’t one I wanted to necessarily look back on in front of an audience (as opposed to in a psychologist’s office), but maybe that is where it should be told. Jude always told me that sometimes the best answer is the most unexpected one, and I certainly didn’t expect to talk about my life on national television, but my brother would have done it in a heartbeat. If Jude could spend an hour explaining the ins and outs of photography to our childhood dog, I think I can talk about my strange life for a few minutes to some humans that at least have the ability to understand what I am saying.

“I don’t know,” I finally answered. “I don’t want him to ask, but I would answer him if he did ask.”

As the elevator slowed to a stop, my grip only tightened on that object that I would refer to as a dear friend in any circumstance. I was an obnoxiously stubborn child, always wanting to do things on my own, never knowing that I could not completely do that, and that cane- my cane- came into my life as a bit of a compromise. Of course, it’s something I can’t live without, but I didn’t understand that when I was younger. Refusing to go to a special school, refusing to get that bulky writer, refusing to learn braille. I truly did regret those adamant decisions I had made in my younger days, but I do sometimes understand the younger Vincent’s reasons for refusing those things. At the time, I supposed it was my way of rebelling against myself, my way of remaining the person I was and not conforming to the person that society wanted me to be.

Part of me hated putting those things off, but another part of me was grateful for waiting until I could appreciate those things more than I would if I were forced into them. Even if I thought it would have been great fun for the younger Vincent to know a special language that my family didn’t understand.

“Your dad was probably just nervous for you,” Val said softly as I held onto her arm. It wasn’t an act I was particularly used to, though it was most helpful when traveling to places such as New York where everything was somewhat overwhelming and I didn’t want to completely rely on my independence to get around safely. My pride may have lost that day, but, you know, I didn’t get run over by one of those famous New York taxis I’ve heard so much about. A classic lose-win situation, really, and I was alright with that. “I think what he was trying to say is that it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared to talk about yourself. I know that’s something you love to do, Vincent, but this is going to be on television. I’m sure Thomas wouldn’t want you getting all embarrassed for the whole country to see because you accidentally talked about something you shouldn’t have.”

“Oh, are you kidding me?” I smiled, taking in the sounds of the sleepless city around me as we left the hotel lobby. “He _absolutely_ would want that. Tommy lives for that shit. You should hear him in the morning, laughing about how stupid my hair gets. I don’t mind when he laughs at me, though, I could listen to that laugh all day.”

“Don’t get all soft now, Vincent. You were the one calling him a pain in the ass earlier.”

“Tommy is a pain in the ass, but he’s _my_ pain in the ass.” It took me a moment to realize exactly what I had said, and any possible innuendo behind it, though I broke out in laughter about it nonetheless. “Don’t tell my dad I told you that.”

* * *

“What do you mean you don’t want to go?” Tommy had almost scoffed at the implication that I would not be going to New York, that I would rather stay with him than go off alone. “They asked me first, but I definitely can’t go right now, so I suggested you. I thought you’d be thrilled about it. It would be a terrible decision for me to go, really, I would just be hurting myself further if I went.”

“People will think I don’t care about you if _I_ went. Or that I’m just taking advantage of all this to make myself look better while you’re stuck here. Can’t you just… I don’t know, do a video interview? People do those,” I sighed in frustration, pleading with Tommy to let me stay.

I didn’t fully understand Tommy’s insistence, nor did I really support it, but I would follow my brother’s advice in listening to others despite not agreeing with them. In the endearing words of Jude: “You have to accept people, Vincent. Just accept everyone, but admire no one, y’know? Admiration causes you to change the person that you are, it gives your brain a biased opinion of yourself and the false belief that you need to change to become someone else. We need to respect people, of course, the ones that lead us down the best paths, but it’s important to criticize them as well. A bit of give and take, I suppose. You just need to accept that people exist and move on, don’t think about it too much. Just be you.”

“Babe, that would make me look desperate for attention if I did that,” Tommy explained in that voice of his, the voice he put on to explain things to me that he believed I didn’t understand, that I was being too emotional or irrational to understand. “I know people are excited to know how I am doing, but I’m not sure now is the time to hear from me, y’know? I don’t want to be public until I am fully better and getting back to work. That would make me look determined and strong, but talking to the news while I am sitting in the hospital wouldn’t be the best look for me.” I must have pulled a face at Tommy’s words, as he chuckled while mentioning how strong and determined he wanted to look. “Just because _you_ don’t care about what other people think about you, it doesn’t mean _I_ can’t, Vincent. Especially when I’m a public figure, I work for the people. I don’t want to come off as some dumb kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing when I could be someone that appeals to the younger voters as well as some of the older ones who have children and grandchildren and need someone to look up to for a brighter future for those children. Everyone’s looking at me as a bit of trial and error, and I can’t afford to fail. I represent a new generation of people that can run for government offices, I need to showcase the best parts of what we can offer.”

“I don’t think you’re doing such a great job of that if _this_ is where it’s getting you.”

Hospitals were not my favorite places to be, for many reasons, but mostly because of days like those. Tommy understood those institutions to be places of healing, but I often thought of them as houses of pain. Where people went to die, where people go to get cut up and sewn back together. As a medical mystery myself, I respected the work that the hospital workers did on a daily basis to make sure the people that enter that hospital come out stronger than they were before, but it was hard to think of those times too much when my experiences were so dark in comparison to the pictures Tommy had tried to paint in my mind.

“Oh, no, I think this is something to use, it means I’m getting to people. If I were any other fuddy-duddy person in Congress, no one would even recognize me on the street, let alone make the conscious decision to hurt me. I want to make _change_ , I want to do things that will benefit the people. I could have been killed, and people know me now, so they can’t make this disappear. Here I was thinking they were smarter than this, that they moved on to making sure we didn’t get elected at all, so they didn’t have to get so sloppy. But, hey, when it comes down to it, no matter what happens, I’ll be on the right side of history, and so will you. I’ll come back to this hospital a hundred times if it means I can make this country a better place than it is today,” Tommy huffed, as he usually did when he got into those heated political discussions. “We deserve better than this, and I believe better is possible.”

“You want to take advantage of this.” I nodded, slowly understanding his words, even if I had pleaded with myself not to. “Make sure people remember it.”

It was on that morning that I had been invited to New York. Tommy, regrettably, was the first person I told about the phone call, who did nothing but urge me to go, to leave him behind. I wasn’t exactly a nurturing person (I was trying my best to bring him something besides hospital food when I could), but it felt strange to go off on an adventure in the most frightening city in the world while the person I should be with was stuck back in Michigan all alone in that unfriendly, sterile room. While he was alone, I would be with Val, who had been given the difficult task of making sure I was going where I needed to go. Which, in normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been an issue, except that I had been required to get to certain places _on time_ , which was not my strongest suit.

“You’ll just be there for two days, that’s all,” he started once again, grabbing my hand as I sat silently in a chair next to his bed. “You’ll fly in on Monday afternoon, have the interview on Tuesday morning, and you’ll be on a flight back here that night. You’ll be in that dumb chair of yours again before you know it, babe. I’ll probably be getting out of here, soon, too, so you’re not going to be missing anything drastic. I’m feeling a million percent better.”

“What if something happens, though? You’re fine right now, but that might change. They said you were fine on Wednesday but then you got all sick because of that medicine and I just… I don’t want to take that chance. You were feeling better ten days ago, too, but we’re here now.”

“Hey, don’t remind me about that,” Tommy laughed. “And I don’t blame anyone for it, either. My body is a work in progress, really, and that was just a temporary setback. A lot of things make me sick, so there’s no real need to get all worried about it.”

“But you want me to leave! I’m supposed to be here keeping you company and making sure you’re okay. I cannot do that when I’ll be six hundred miles away.”

“Aw, you did math for me. It must really be important to you,” he teased as he shook my hand lightly. “It’s not like I’ll be completely alone here, Vincent. I’ll call Jean and she will be here in a heartbeat. Or your parents, you know, or-”

“Your aunt works midnights, Tommy, I don’t think she wants to spend her time sitting here for two days when I am perfectly able to be here instead,” I replied, shaking my head after he scoffed in response. “It’s fine for _me_ to sit here because I’m dating you and I’m not forty years old. I’m not here out of obligation, I’m here because I want to be. And I need to be here to take care of that cat of yours at home, too. No, I’m not asking your aunt to do that, because I don’t want to burden her even more than she is just by, y’know, being your aunt. She raised you for the last twenty years of your life- both your lives- and I think she deserves a break now.”

“Why are you being so stubborn about this? You’re a musician, you love talking to people,” he sighed. “I’m not forcing you to go or anything, but I just thought that this would be something that you’d like to do, that’s all.”

“I don’t like playing this card, Tommy, but the last time something like this happened, I wasn’t where I should have been. You can call it being stubborn, but it scares me, okay?”

“You were just a kid back then. This is different! I’m awake and I’m fine and you’re with me right now, I mean- I’m in pain, yeah, but I’m not actively dying or anything. Well, not from this, anyway.”

Part of me knew that Tommy was right, that he was doing better and in good hands. But that night, only ten days ago, was just another nightmare to me, a moment in time that I tried to push to the back of my mind again and again, no matter how much time has passed, no matter how many times someone would grab me by my shoulders and tell me that everything was going to be okay; unbeknownst to them, I was so lost to it all that I could barely hear them. It was only so easy for me to repress that night because it hardly had anything to do with me at all, it was Tommy’s cross to bear. And, in a few months, that scar on his side would be my only reminder that it had happened at all. That imperfect patch of skin would go on to be thumbed over countless times on those tough nights when I couldn’t sleep while other nightmares spread throughout my mind. Every cruel nightmare life offers has that reminder, doesn’t it? An empty chair at the table, bedrooms that have never been used, scars that never healed; those were the things about life that made it so coldhearted sometimes, those marks both on and in us that would never go away.

Tommy was the one with the most reminders of how cruel life had been to him. A fractured ankle taking him out of his senior-year baseball season was the thing that seemed to start it all, the thing that twisted his life all around until he landed there. There, a cumbersome hospital bed. There, a stuffy room that smelled faintly of disinfectant. There, a loud institution of infection where the unknown chatter of its staff constantly lingered beyond the door. There, but never _there_. Tommy belonged out _there_ , on the streets, where his actions spoke louder than his words. That’s where his campaign first started, of course, out _there_. Reading to children at local elementary schools, delivering groceries to the elderly, donating whatever change he had to make sure whatever charity was receiving those noisy coins wouldn’t leave empty-handed. Tommy never gave speeches, never attacked his opponents. He was the person that our district deserved, and they believed that, and they needed him. They didn’t need me going to New York in his place, and I didn’t need it, either.

But it was Tommy that needed it.

“Just two days?” I asked softly, somewhat hoping he didn’t hear me giving in to his request.

“I will call you, like, every hour if you want me to.” I could hear the excitement in his voice, knowing that, while the interview would be about him, he got the opportunity to see me on television. I never understood that about Tommy, but he was always so proud of me. Not just when I was accomplishing anything in particular, but just because of the person I was; he was proud to have known me and equally to have loved me.

“Two days just feels like a long time to me. The only time we’ve been apart that long is when you’re at work,” I answered, the realization hitting me just as quickly as the words were said. Tommy and I had only been dating solidly for nineteen months (since the night he told me he was running for Congress, though the two events were hardly connected), but, apart from Tommy’s time at the capital, we’ve never been away from each other in those nineteen months for longer than a day. I craved my independence more than anything, but my short-sighted version of independence for the last six years of knowing Tommy was to just cling to him and hope for the best. “It doesn’t seem that long, but time doesn’t always fly by for me. I don’t have a regular job, I’m a musician. I’m not exactly sitting in an office and filing paperwork for eight hours.”

The person I used to be would have accepted the invitation without hesitation. I mean, are you kidding me? A trip to New York? Anything was possible in that city, and the person I was would have accepted that challenge with open arms. The person that was sitting next to his boyfriend in a hospital room, however, was afraid of the very same thing. And I was starting to resent that.

“I don’t even know what I would say to them. I’m not you, Tommy, I can’t speak for you. I don’t know the things you think about.”

“I don’t think they expect you to talk as if you were me,” he laughed, squeezing my hand lightly. “And I’m pretty sure you, of all people, would know the kinds of things I think about.”

“First of all, no.” I shook my head, unable to fight the blush rising to my cheeks judging by the way Tommy continued to laugh. “Secondly, don’t you think it would be a bit biased if I were to go to talk about you? It’s like putting down your grandmother as a reference on your résumé.”

“They’ll want to know basic stuff, babe. How my campaign went and how I am feeling and stuff. Just basic facts, you know, nothing opinion-based. I’m sure they’re not going to ask what my biggest flaw is, but if they do, be sure to say I’m a perfectionist. That’s a thing people say, right?”

“Well, maybe the people that actually are perfectionists, yeah,” I smiled. “I doubt anyone would buy that shit from you, _Thomas_.”

“Not with this hair, anyway,” he laughed softly. “But, hey, this mop of mine hasn’t failed me yet. It makes me look more relatable, I think. I didn’t exactly go around knocking on people’s doors in a suit and tie. Though, apparently, that would have actually helped my numbers.”

“Always so optimistic.” I shook my head at Tommy’s words, reaching up to run my fingers through his messy hair, an action that had previously only calmed me in my fits of frustration, only slightly missing and smacking his nose in the process. “Where do you even get that from?”

“I get it from watching you, you idiot. No matter what life throws at you, you get back up and just keep fighting. Which is why I am completely confident in you going to New York and having an absolute blast. And hey, if not, you can always just use the time to try and understand that dumb song of yours,” he said with that unmistakable hint of humor of his. “I don’t understand why it’s so confusing to you, really. Have you ever tried just sitting down and listening to the tape without trying to make something of it? Not everything needs to be explained, Vincent.”

For the last seven years of my life, just a bit over a third of the time I had been part of this strange world, I dedicated a good chunk of my time to music, as it was my career and something that brought me great joy. It was mostly Tommy who introduced me to the world of modern music, as, before I had met him, I spent my time listening to old classical music tapes that my brother and I would find in thrift stores on the weekends, but it was that connection to the likes of Schubert and Vivaldi that influenced the way I wanted to play my music than anything Tommy could ever present to me.

Well, that had been true until he so humbly presented me with a tape featuring one Piano Sonata Number Fourteen back when Tommy and Vincent weren’t Tommy and Vincent, which would go on to be the only song that I had never fully understood. Disabled myself, I thought it would be a breeze, thinking that Mr. Beethoven and I would have that mutual understanding of the world and how it worked for those like us, but I could never understand that piece from the moment it began; deep, dark, depressing is all it was. I would rewind and restart that tape for hours with no result, and the fact that Tommy brought it up to me only made it more painfully obvious that I might never understand it. After everything I’ve done, after everything I’ve been through, after every person I was and aspired to be, why could I not understand it? Why was it doing nothing but mocking me?

“I don’t think I’m bringing my Walkman with me.” I shrugged, ignoring the question that pestered me. “I’ll bring it by for you, though. Something to remember me by while I’m away making a mess of your career.”

“You will do just fine,” Tommy sighed, a sigh that had turned into a chuckle towards its end. “And Vincent, honey, as impossible it would be to forget you, I will take your garbage tapes just so that I can get a fresh reminder of just how bad your taste in music is.”

Though in that moment I probably wanted some subtle yet sweet kiss, what came from Tommy was something way more intimate and way more him. I loved Tommy’s kisses, obviously, who wouldn't? I would liken them to that gorgeous scent that would rise up after a thunderstorm, that beautiful feeling of grabbing a favorite blanket right out of the dryer, that first note of a song that one could immediately know would mark an important time in their life just because they are listening to _that_ song. Believe me, I could go on for hours rambling about how much I adore my boyfriend and when he gets home from a long weekend away at work and peppers my cheeks (and my nose, and my lips, and everything else on my probably disgusting face as he usually returned home at obscenely late hours, but of course, Timmy was coming home, so I had to stay up) so much I can’t help but break out in a fit of giggles, but he did not, in fact, kiss me that day in the hospital, so it feels almost sacrilegious to speak as though he did.

Instead, in true Tommy fashion, he reached up and pulled me down for what I had believed to be that aforementioned kiss but turned out to be nothing more than a forehead touch that must have been doing more for him than me. I’ve grown to love the gesture, how more intimate it somehow felt without being at all romantic. We were romantic people, of course, Tommy was attracted to me in every way possible (as he’d mentioned many, many times; certainly more than one would expect from someone so socially anxious), which I think gave him the confidence to _not_ be romantic all the time. Perhaps he was doing it for me, as my doubts at that point in our relationship knew no bounds, but it was a moment I suspect I’ll remember for a long time. Whether that was Tommy’s intention, I never asked, though not out of fear of ruining the moment. I simply didn’t think I needed to.

* * *

Once I heard that familiar voice, that voice that rang out across the country every night, it started to hit me where I was and what I was doing. The last two weeks of my life seemed to be a big blur, those days quickly fading away into repressed memories until I ended up in that chair in that studio in that city, offering my hand for what I had hoped was a friendly handshake.

It was strange, all of it. Of course, I knew what happened (hell, I was _there_ when it happened), but I was numb to that night; like all of my memories, most of what I remember from that night were the sounds, all that commotion and being rushed along when I couldn’t understand _why_.

One minute I was laughing about the terrible weather, the next I was sitting in a disturbingly still waiting room.

Part of me, the me that was in New York, was hoping that I was dreaming and waiting to wake up in my bed back home, sighing so relieved when I would hear that soft breathing next to me. And it had taken a few moments to realize that what was happening was not a dream, that I truly was in New York and listening to Jasper Little talk about- well, it was hard to say. I might have zoned out while he was talking, my mind having been preoccupied with processing those events that had happened. But it was true! Oh, it was true!

“It’s nice to meet you,” I breathed, hoping that was a good place to start. Judging by the laughter Jasper awarded me with, it was.

“Oh, please, the pleasure is all mine.” His voice was warm and inviting, something that shouldn’t have come as a shock due to me knowing what his voice sounded like as well as his profession as a trustworthy deliverer of news. “Thank you for coming out to talk to us, Mr. Bodenstein. We weren’t sure if this would happen at all, and I know it is quite a difficult time for you right now, so I hope we can get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

“Oh, it’s, uh… Vincent is just fine,” I stammered loudly as a high-pitched squeal rang out through the small room, making a sound I could only compare to nails on a chalkboard. I knew that scraping sound quite well, that sound that could have easily been avoided if someone decided to pick up the chair while moving it instead of pushing it across the floor. “And thank you for having me, I’ve never been to New York before.”

“It’ll just be a few minutes before we get started, I think they’re still trying to fix one of the cameras,” James stated flatly. “Nervous?”

“Is it that obvious?” I laughed as I played with my glasses as they remained in my hand. “I’ve always been a rather extroverted person, so I thought this wouldn’t be too much of an issue. I think it’s just starting to hit me that this is going to be on television for everyone to see. Nothing out of Port City makes the news, really.”

“I think you’ll do just fine. And this is national news, not just local news. An assault on a member of Congress? I don’t think it matters if this happened in New York City or a small town in Kansas. This is an important story that the American people need to hear,” he replied with that well-known determined voice of his. It almost made me feel as though he cared about all of this, but there was that more powerful- more fatherly- voice in the back of my head that said to take everything Jasper was spitting out with a grain of salt. “Well, I know that people have heard about it, but it doesn’t hurt to show everyone that it has affected people personally. That his family and friends are hurting because of this. It might be American history, unfortunately, but it’s an important event in his personal history as well.”

“And Tommy gets that- I think we both understand that, you know, this is a story that will go into history, and I think he sort of hates that at the same time? That he’s going to be known for this, not for the barriers that he broke or his accomplishments, but that someone tried to kill him.”

“It feels strange to want to keep asking you questions before we even start filming, but that was a very interesting response there, Vincent. What do you think Representative Roosevelt’s reaction to the interview will be? I think this will be the first interview you’ve given by yourself. Especially since the inauguration and all of that fun stuff.”

“Oh, it’s- I will say that it is still very strange to hear people give him that title, but I think Tommy will lose his shit when he sees this. I don’t understand it at all, obviously,” I joked, gesturing vaguely to my face, “but he really loves looking at me. He calls me a strange creature, which I guess should be taken as a compliment. The way I move and do things is just the most fascinating thing in the world to him. Hopefully, that’s a good thing, I don’t want him getting bored of me.”

“And that would be because…?”

I knew what Jasper was doing, by asking about our relationship, and I suppose I was grateful for that. Throughout my life, Tommy had always been my rock, the person I could always rely on to be there and make things better. Even if he wasn’t in New York with me, just the thought of him as a person made me realize how lucky I was to have him. He was strange, he often did things that frustrated himself just as much as they frustrated me, but he was still Tommy.

Our relationship was a source of comfort to me, though Tommy himself was a completely different story. The relationship was familiar, it was something that just worked for me in all the best ways, like an old tailored suit that still fits no matter how much time has passed. The knowledge of the suit that still fits might be enough for someone to keep it, even if it is a bit itchy in the collar.

As strange as it was to think of it in that way, our relationship was that knowledge, while Tommy was the suit. It may be frustrating from time to time, as all suits are, though it wouldn’t have felt right to go through the effort of forcing another suit to fit when there’s a perfectly good one right there. 

It would have been expected of me to go through that, to experience the entire ordeal of dating and relationships with other people, and part of me didn’t want that. Part of me loved Tommy because our relationship was unexpected, but part of me wanted to leave him because I wasn’t sure if our relationship was something that was supposed to happen at all. “Expectations are the root of so many problems, Vincent,” Jude explained to me in his room on a grossly hot summer night, the pungent stench of nail polish making it that much more unbearable as he painted his nails to be what he described to be bubblegum pink, the same color as his girlfriend’s hair. Well, one of them, at least. “If people only did what was expected of them, we’d never be who we are meant to be.”

My brother often orbited that very same question himself, and usually thrived upon realization that it was an impossible thing to answer: who are we supposed to be?

“I think he’s fascinated by me simply because he loves me,” I nodded, furrowing my eyebrows as I thought about how to answer Jasper’s vague question. “I could just be combing my hair, but it’s like he’s watching an Oscar-winning film, y’know, he’s asking dumb questions and laughing at stuff. Just the way Tommy engages with me when we aren’t even doing anything is cool. He always tells me that I’m beautiful, which I don’t fully understand, but it does help me understand that word just a little bit because of the way he makes me feel.”

“I don’t think we are going to have much of an issue with this at all,” Jasper laughed. “Better move my chair back, I think we’re just about ready to get this thing started.”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Though my words were mostly meant for Jasper and his team, they were just as helpful to myself, who might’ve not fully believed those words if I were not completely supported in that strange endeavor that wasn’t quite mine, but one I took on just the same. And I believed I was okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> come be my friend on tumblr! I don't bite I promise @kenzie-ann27


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